Truyện Kiều: underneath the Confucianism

1/ In my brief blog post about Confucianism, I wrote that Truyện Kiều must be understood in light of Confucianism. Indeed, Truyện Kiều is a 19th literary work, based on a 17-century Chinese novel, which depicts a society shaped by Confucianism. 
For example, it’s because of filial piety that Kiều sells herself to save her father and brother, and because of loyalty that she asks Vân to fulfil her promise with Kim Trọng by marrying him instead; similarly, it’s because of respect for her sister that Vân agrees. From the modern perspective, these actions are difficult to understand, and one might say it’s one thing for Kiều to ask Vân and Vân to accept, but why does Kim Trọng go along with it? Readers must keep in mind that this was a different time, a different society. After all, my great grandfather never meant to marry my great grandmother—he was in love with her sister, but she passed away.  
However, it’s precisely because Truyện Kiều depicts a Confucian society, in which everyone must know their own place and perform well their own part, that it’s interesting to see a character cross boundaries and do something unconventional, or to see the hierarchy disrupted. 
Kiều, for instance, has 3 loves in her life: Kim Trọng, Thúc Sinh, Từ Hải. This is remarkable. It’s no wonder that for a while in Vietnam, many critics of Truyện Kiều called it pornographic and immoral. 
Kiều takes the initiative in her relationship with Kim Trọng. They meet at the festival and fall in love at first sight, and for 2 months, Kim Trọng is sick with infatuation but doesn’t know how to start a conversation with her even though they’re now neighbours and he’s schoolmate with her brother Vương Quan. It’s only when he finds her hairpin in a tree that he gets an excuse to start talking to her, and afterwards it’s always Kiều who comes to him—she goes to his house several times. The only time Kim Trọng comes to her is when he gets the news of a relative’s death and must go away for a while. 


2/ To save her family, Kiều sells herself to become Mã Giám Sinh’s concubine (in English: Scholar Ma). Then she follows him back to his province, and meets his main wife, Tú Bà (in English: Madame Tu). 
Imagine Kiều’s shock when Tú Bà changes their pronouns and roles, forcing her to address her as mother and Mã Giám Sinh as father. This is a society in which there is a hierarchy and each person has a clear role—Kiều and Mã Giám Sinh have had a wedding, and their wedding night, why does she now have to address him as father and his main wife as mother? As it turns out, Tú Bà runs a brothel and Mã Giám Sinh recruits prostitutes for her by pretending to look for concubines, and it is custom that the woman running a brothel to call her prostitutes her daughters. 
I had a brief look at Timothy Allen’s translation—he removes an important line, misrepresents the relationship between Mã Giám Sinh and Tú Bà (Mã Giám Sinh is not only a pimp working for her), mistranslates the kinship terms (he translates “mẹ” and “cậu” into “auntie” and “uncle”), and therefore downplays the significance of the scene, in which the roles are suddenly changed and Kiều doesn’t understand the change. It is a great deception, and the first step in Kiều’s 15 years of adversity. She sells herself only to be concubine, but ends up becoming a prostitute. 


3/ Confucianism dictates that women are inferior to men—a wife is inferior to her husband (see my blog post about Confucianism and the 3 Obediences and 4 Virtues for women). 
It is therefore interesting to look at 2 marriages in Truyện Kiều. 
In Mã Giám Sinh- Tú Bà marriage, Tú Bà is the one running the brothel. Once his job is done, he’s more or less dropped from the narrative. It is Tú Bà who hires Sở Khanh and creates a scheme to deceive Kiều, give her a painful lesson, and force her to yield. 
If we go back, it is clear that Mã Giám Sinh is quite afraid of her—at the beginning, he can’t resist sleeping with Kiều, because of her beauty, and thinks that if his wife finds out, it can’t be worse than being forced to kneel. That line clearly shows who’s dominant in the marriage. 
In the brothel, Kiều meets and falls in love with Thúc Sinh (in English: Student Thuc). He decides to buy her out of the brothel and marry her, but he already has a wife, Hoạn Thư (in English: Lady Hoan). They live together and have the happiest time of their life, but after a while, Kiều has to ask him to return home, inform his wife, and seek her approval. 
Hoạn Thư is an intelligent, artful, and cunning woman. Thúc Sinh returns home but doesn’t dare to mention his new concubine, thinking why he has to confess if she doesn’t ask. He doesn’t realise his wife is manipulative and calculating, and she plans to take a revenge on Kiều and teach him a lesson. Without spoiling the story, I will only say that so far Hoạn Thư is the most fascinating and vivid character in Truyện Kiều (followed by Tú Bà as 2nd), and in Vietnamese her name becomes a noun to refer to insanely jealous women. 
Thúc Sinh, for whatever reasons, doesn’t become a noun, but he is vividly drawn as a pathetic, feeble man, scared of his wife (“sợ vợ” is the Vietnamese term for “scared of one’s wife”). Before Hoạn Thư, he is weak and helpless, even when she humiliates Kiều in front of him. 
There can be many reasons—after all Thúc Sinh is (forever) a student, whereas Hoạn Thư comes from a rich, powerful family, and he is probably dependent on her. But I think he’s also weak by nature, and in some ways, deplorable. 

If you’re interested in other classics beyond the Western canon, especially East Asian classics, you should read Nguyễn Du’s Truyện Kiều.